Category: First Aid/Medical

How to Survive a Serious Burn, by Cynthia J. Koelker, MD

How large must a burn be to kill you?  How is a burn fatal anyway?  Is there anything you can do to improve your odds? Lacking an emergency response system, you’ll be on your own if you cook yourself on a heating pad, or catch your clothes on fire, or spill hot coffee down your pants while driving.  What would now be referred to a burn unit for specialized care may require home treatment when it’s the only option. Without skin, you die.  The danger of burns is related to the function of the skin.  Normally the skin “keeps the …


Letter Re: NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards

JWR: I would also recommend the Emergency Response Guidebook published jointly by the USDOT and Canadian and Mexican Transportation agencies. This reference (ERG) lets you identify the material being transported by pipeline, tanker truck, or railcar. As a guide for First Responders to a HazMat accident, it also lists specific hazards and evacuation distances in the event of spill or fire. I use this book to evaluate how at risk I am to accidents involving bulk materials being transported nearby. You need to pay attention to the placard (label) information on the side of the tanker. In my community I …


Tea Tree Oil When There Is No Medicine, by B.R. in San Diego

Disclaimer: I am a retired military officer and school teacher.  I have no formal medical or first aid training.  My recommendations are made based on anecdotal personal experience.  Nothing I recommend should be undertaken without first consulting with a physician.   When there is no medicine. Preppers have usually read and probably own copies of well-respected books having to do with post-TEOTWAWKI conditions in which medical and dental care are not available.  Most of us have accumulated some knowledge of what medicines to stockpile, their uses, and shelf-lives.  After persuading a physician to write prescriptions for the desired medicinals, some have …


Letter Re: Dehydration and Rehydration Solutions

James, Rehydration can still be accomplished when a person cannot take anything by mouth. Normally he would be given an IV. In a SHTF situation, this may not be possible. Rather one can fill an enema bag with normal saline (very dilute salt water-recipe on the internet-need not be sterile) attach a rubber urinary catheter to the enema tip, Using vaseline jelly feed the rubber catheter into the rectum carefully as not to pierce the bowel and let the tepid salt water very slowly drip in. It should be able to be absorbed because it is going in very slowly and a little higher up rather than being …


NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards

JWR: I found an interesting free NIOSH publication concerning recommendations for protective equipment when exposed to chemicals. It is technical so this is something that you will have to read ahead to know how to use. It also gives a listing of what the DOT numbers on placards of transportation equipment mean with a reference to what personal protective equipment is needed. If you scroll to page 379 it will reference a page number which tells what the chemical is including the threat and what protective measures need to be taken. – Bill N.


Dehydration and Rehydration Solutions, by M.A. in Washington State

I would first like to thank you and all of the previous posters on this blog. I have been an avid reader for a few years now and I have learned immeasurably from you all. Dehydration can be a problem for individuals in the first world today, and a massive problem for those in the third world. In a post collapse situation, life for us in America and the rest of the first world countries could look more like the latter. There are many causes for dehydration, from working outside in the heat and sweating out fluids to a serious …


Letter Re: The Mass Casualty Incident: Triage

JWR:| That was an excellent article on triage of patients in a mass casualty incident (MCI), which is also known as a multiple casualty incident. I was taught in EMT school that an MCI is any event that my truck can’t handle by itself, or an incident that overwhelms currently available resources because of the number of patients involved. Slightly tangentially, in class one day we were talking about organ donors and I volunteered the information that I haven’t signed up as a donor. There’s no donor info on my driver’s license. However, my wife and family members have been …


The Mass Casualty Incident: Triage, by Amy Alton, A.R.N.P., and Joe Alton, M.D.

The responsibilities of a medic in times of trouble will usually be one-to-one; that is, the healthcare provider will be dealing with one ill or injured individual at a time.  If you have dedicated yourself to medical preparedness, you will have accumulated significant stores of supplies and some knowledge. Therefore, your encounter with any one person should be, with any luck, within your expertise and resources.  There may be a day, however, when you find yourself confronted with a scenario in which multiple people are injured.  This is referred to as a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI). A mass casualty incident …


Sharp Wound Management, by Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. and Joe Alton, M.D.

Given the media outcry against gun ownership, it’s easy to forget the wounds that are caused by knives and other sharp instruments.  Trauma incurred from these injuries may be minor or major; penetrating trauma such as caused by a stab wound should not be discounted as a major injury; it can be life-threatening, depending on the organs and blood vessels damaged.  Penetrating trauma is divided into perforating and non-perforating.  A perforating wound is one in which the object causing the damage goes into one side of the body and then exits through the other side.  A wound from .223 or …


Medical Notes from Nicaraguan Villages, by COEMT

Here are some insights that I gained from a recent week-long medical mission trip to Nicaragua. We treated hundreds of men, women, and children living in remote villages for general medical complaints.  I envision these conditions as being similar to what many of us would see in TEOTWAWKI. Living conditions: Mostly, the men in these villages are subsistence farmers, picking coffee beans, or something similar.  The women stay at home and take care of the children, grandparents, and animals – chickens and pigs.  Their average income is very low, in the 10’s of dollars per month. Their houses are really shacks …


Seventeen and Prepping, by Michael on the East Coast

Greetings, my fellow SurvivalBlog readers! My name is Michael, and I am seventeen years old. I live somewhere on the East Coast of the United States of America with my mother and father. To the rest of the world, I appear a normal teenage boy: Glued to my iPad, where I read SurvivalBlog each night before bed, obsessed with both new and old music, and always quoting music lyrics, movies and television shows with my friends. Yet what both the majority my friends and society do not know is for the last year I have been preparing for The End …


Letter Re: Sugardyne for Wound Treatment

Hi James, I’m sure you’ve heard of this–but on the off chance you haven’t, you definitely need to: The miraculous wound-healing benefits of a goop made from sugar and betadine (povidone iodine–available cheaply everywhere). You mix together and make a paste, which can be packed into deep wounds and gouges. Some people refer to it as “sugardine.” Not everyone knows that sugar alone has been used for hundreds of years as an effective gunshot wound treatment. The high osmotic gradient it promotes attracts and traps bacteria–and animal cells are better able to withstand high osmotic conditions than bacterial cells. The …


Prepping Saved My Dog’s Life, by L. Joseph Mountain

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Suddenly all chaos broke loose. For a second it sounded like an unknown dog had got inside the fence. I grabbed my staff and was out the door before anyone else could react. I was briefly reassured to see the fence was holding an unknown pit bull out but my pit bull was in full war mode. They were in fact fighting, trying to fight through the fence. Given enough time they would get through it, over it or under it. The hose was called for. Moving quickly but carefully I unwind some hose and return to see the Sheltie …


Surviving the Aftermath, Hurricane Katrina Style, by Frank G.

On the morning of August 29th, 2005 we came face to face with TEOTWAWKI in the form of Hurricane Katrina.  An estimated 92% of our community in Pascagoula, Mississippi was inundated with a storm surge of 20-30 feet and 30-55 feet sea waves.  The surge waters traveled well inland, between 6-12 miles and combined with freshwater flooding from our numerous creeks, rivers, and the runoff from the Mobile, Alabama reservoir that opened its flood gates to relieve stress on the dam.  This basically cut Jackson County in half.  Fortunately the worst of the storm hit in the morning just as …


Three Letters Re: Bad as a Bullet: Tick and Mosquito-Borne Diseases

James:  I live in Tennessee where mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks thrive.  There are two wet weather ponds near my home and if I go to my shooting range in the evening or early morning, the mosquitoes will make any quality time really miserable.  While working in the gardens and fields, one has to be constantly checking themselves for ticks.   Last year about April I read a short paragraph in Countryside Magazine from a gentleman (I believe from Maine) that has taken a Vitamin B1 tablet starting in April and takes them every day until the first killing frost in the Fall for the past …